Crossing the border with Blue Jays beat reporter Jordan Bastian.

Burnett decision coming

TORONTO — All right, so I haven’t been blogging as much as you all would probably like. Imagine, I’ve actually just been enjoying some time off for much of the past month. But, today there was actually some Blue Jays news that convinced me to head back to the ol’ keyboard here.

A few things, some of the lesser stuff out of the way first: Brad Wilkerson has filed for free agency and a report out of Puerto Rico confirmed that Alex Rios will indeed be suiting up for P.R. in the upcoming World Baseball Classic. The “big” news of the day involved A.J. Burnett.

A report on ESPN.com indicated that Burnett’s agent, Darek Braunecker, said the pitcher would make a decision about his opt out clause by Monday — prior to the start of the GM Meetings in California. I spoke with Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi, who was watching his boys play hockey back home in Mass., and he hadn’t heard about this new “deadline.”

As it turns out, Braunecker told me tonight that he was misunderstood. What he meant was that, in order for him to talk to other clubs about Burnett, the pitcher would need to make a decision before Monday. That didn’t mean that a decision was going to necessarily come this weekend.

We haven’t put a timetable on anything,” Braunecker said. “Obviously, his decision would need to be made in the next few days if indeed we wanted to have the opportunity to talk to people at the general managers’ meetings about him.

“I’m going to the GM meetings and we’ve got multiple free agents this winter. For us to discuss A.J. with anybody, then he would have to exercise the out at that time.”

Braunecker and Ricciardi both indicated that they’ve had general discussions, but neither side would going into specifics, or say that specifics — contract length or money — had been part of the talks. Toronto still has exclusive negotiating rights with Burnett until he decides whether or not to opt out.

So, a decision could be coming soon, maybe even this weekend. But Burnett could just as easily wait until Nov. 13 to make up his mind. Stay tuned…

Blue Jays prospect J.P. Arencibia homered in his first two at-bats Thursday as the red-hot Phoenix Desert Dogs won their sixth in a row with a 7-1 victory over the Peoria Javelinas.

Arencibia, who batted .298 with 27 homers and 105 RBIs in 126 games between Class A Advanced Dunedin and Double-A New Hampshire this season, has carried his penchant for run production into the Arizona Fall League.

The 22-year-old catcher sparked a four-run first inning with a two-run homer and added a solo blast in the second to give him four roundtrippers and 17 RBIs in 16 fall contests.

Toronto’s first-round pick in the 2007 First-Year Player Draft has been especially productive of late, driving in at least one run in seven straight games while racking up 15 RBIs during that stretch.

Meta

The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.